Display posts from previous

Sort by

The Sopranos is not some puzzle to be decoded, where everything, every symbol or line or scene, has some fixed meaning that must be applied to the whole (which isn't to say that the series isn't rich in meaning, just that it's more about a casual, connective web of associations). The show is like life in that some things are meaningful, others not, and still others appear to be greatly meaningful but they have a significance that is hard to pin down or verbalize. Nothing is straight forward, or as it seems. The banal and the mysterious reside side by side. It would be trite and intellectually dishonest for the show to offer some grand answer or meaning to the intriguing and difficult questions it asks; great art is almost always about asking questions, not giving answers. Many things are better left unexplained; for example, would the last dream in "Calling All Cars" with the shadowy woman on the staircase be just as haunting and unforgettable as it is now if Chase had inserted some scene of Tony or Melfi going "A-ha! that's what that dream was about, it was about ___" or if there even was a parallel scene in real life where Tony sees the same house as in the dream and some forced dialogue or staging is put in to make the meaning of it all clearer. No, this would be silly and artless. I like that the show leaves the answers to us, as in life.

misterie wrote:The Sopranos is not some puzzle to be decoded, where everything, every symbol or line or scene, has some fixed meaning that must be applied to the whole (which isn't to say that the series isn't rich in meaning, just that it's more about a casual, connective web of associations). The show is like life in that some things are meaningful, others not, and still others appear to be greatly meaningful but they have a significance that is hard to pin down or verbalize. Nothing is straight forward, or as it seems. The banal and the mysterious reside side by side. It would be trite and intellectually dishonest for the show to offer some grand answer or meaning to the intriguing and difficult questions it asks; great art is almost always about asking questions, not giving answers. Many things are better left unexplained; for example, would the last dream in "Calling All Cars" with the shadowy woman on the staircase be just as haunting and unforgettable as it is now if Chase had inserted some scene of Tony or Melfi going "A-ha! that's what that dream was about, it was about ___" or if there even was a parallel scene in real life where Tony sees the same house as in the dream and some forced dialogue or staging is put in to make the meaning of it all clearer. No, this would be silly and artless. I like that the show leaves the answers to us, as in life.

Unsupported statements in the face of many contrary arguments seem pretentious to me. If you disagree with the multitude then build and present support for your point of view.
Do we need to be reminded that "without meaning" is the same thing as " meaningless"?
Or did you mean that Art(ie) Bucco has no meaning?

Unsupported statements in the face of many contrary arguments seem pretentious to me. If you disagree with the multitude then build and present support for your point of view.
Do we need to be reminded that "without meaning" is the same thing as " meaningless"?
Or did you mean that Art(ie) Bucco has no meaning?

Well, this is where the battle between subjective and objective "truth" gets very sticky, and that dichotomy has been a key focus in my spiritual journey the last few years. To one who doesn't see meaning, there is no meaning. To one that does, there is. That's most obviously true in relation to deliberate man-made creations (like art of any kind), but it's also true of the Rorschach of life.

As much as we all strive to validate our perspectives by searching outside of ourselves to see if they are shared -- and as much satisfaction as we often derive from finding that "meeting of the minds" -- in the end, the only "true" perspective is your own. The difficulty is often disentangling that truly individual perspective from the conditioned views of the families and larger society that we inevitably (and often unconsciously) internalize in the process of growing up human.

Observor, I have no problem accepting that you don't find meaning in The Sopranos. Many others, however, find it in abundance.

Tony, his spirits crushed after b-lining to the fridge first thing in the morning: "Who ate the last piece of cake?"

I never said I didn't find meaning in it. But if a million people find a million different implications then it seems like a fruitless endeavor. Certainly you know that the gravity of a television show must be limited anyway.